Prosvyet: Bittersweet
by NDV
Summary: After "Prosvyet: A Different Kind of Forever", things seem to change even more...


Okay, disclaimer time: The characters aren't mine, the story is. The song parts are from Sarah McLachlan's Freedom Sessions, and Jennifer Paige's self-titled album. The songs are titled, respectively: Ice, and Beautiful.  
  
I do want to state that I am first and foremost an Alexis fan, and then a Nexis fan. However, I'm all for experimentation of the normal variety. This is how I see it as it should have happened on the show.  
  
The rating is probably a PG-13, just to be safe.   
  
Thank you to all the people who gave me feedback on the first story, Prosvyet: A Different Kind of Forever (http://soapzone.com/boards/gh/fanfic/25874-47484.html), whether on the message board or through e-mail (lizaausten@tri-countynet.net or malenka@malenkaya.com). It was much appreciated. Personally, I think the first story was better and much more organized and to the point. This is basically dabbling in thought patterns and etc., and isn't organized at all. However, a sequel/companion was requested, and I felt the need to give it... Thanks again :-) And feedback is requested, of course :-)  
  
I'll shut up now, really!  
  
Oh, by the way, make sure you read to the end, there's a line or so sandwiched in between two song parts, but it's labeled :-)  
  
  
  
Prosvyet: Bittersweet  
  
---The ice is thin come on dive in  
underneath my lucid skin.  
The cold is lost, forgotten.---  
  
  
Her barely covered shoulders scuffed against the wood of the walls, leaving pink marks upon her skin. The sheet fell low on her back, the ends held together by her clasped hands. Her rocking never ceased.  
  
Moonlight fell through the window, only serving to remind her of how cold it was outside, as the town beneath was shadowed and forgotten. The tears would not come, Alexis' sobs were dry. Like her lover, she had no tears left to cry.  
  
She pulled the sheet tighter around her otherwise naked body, pushing herself to her feet against the wall. Without another sound, her own quiet crying had just fallen to labored breathing, she began to pace toward the door of her hotel room. Her blouse was strung across the pillows of her sofa, her skirt lay across a darkened lamp, and her modest underclothing was strown in various other places and positions.   
  
Quickly she dressed, smoothing her hose and fighting the wrinkles in her blouse and the lumps in her usually perfect hair. Finally her movements turned idle and she, without thought, continued running her hand down the side of her outfit, her eyes on the bedroom door.  
  
It would have been so easy to give in, to lay beside the man she loved and forget the nonsense running through her otherwise muddled mind. So simple to remove the clothing she'd sought out, and crawl back under the covers with Ned. So... right, almost, to pretend that this wasn't 'one for the road', or a 'last fling' with him. The expressions mindlessly slipped into her thoughts.  
  
So easy to give in and go back to him, only to wake in the morning and fight about her next court date with Sonny, or her involvement with Zander, or... so many other things.  
  
So easy to fall in love with the flawed and misunderstanding man in the next room, the good-intentioned, gentle, worrying businessman she'd been carelessly clandestined to love. But, Alexis reasoned, her thoughts shifting again, destiny isn't always enough. Love isn't always enough. And neither are good intentions.   
  
Chloe was right, she sighed to herself, whatifs get you nowhere, and neither do soeasys and wanttos.   
  
Because oh, how she wanted to fall into the bed with Ned, strip off her clothing, and just hold him as close to her heart as he could be.And how she wanted just to trust him again...  
  
A broken heart teaches you a few things, she thought, standing again and moving to the window. She pulled the curtains back further, so that the full view of the city was utilized, and the silver moonlight could better light the room.  
  
Being heart-broken hurts like hell, Alexis knew, and it wasn't the first time she'd been hurt, but it was the first time she'd been *torn* to shreds by something that was supposed to *help*, supposed to forgive, and supposed to *be*.   
  
Love hurts.  
  
A broken heart makes you nervous, shy, almost frightened, and, as the thought slipped through her morose mind, she chuckled out loud. "Doesn't change much," Alexis whispered into the shades of blue.   
  
Ned had loved her so completely, so much, that it smothered her, choked her, and killed her. Ned's love was whole and good, and forgiving, real, *true*. And it frightened her so. Standing at the end of the aisle, she finally understood the meaning of the phrases 'knocking knees' and 'chilled to the bone'. Ned loved her so wonderfully, so fully, that he wanted her to be his wife. And Alexis loved him so much she *wouldn't* be his wife.  
  
She wouldn't break his heart.   
  
Instead, he broke hers.  
  
Granted, Alexis sighed, she had left him at the end of an aisle, with everyone they knew filling a church, waiting for them to marry; granted that, no doubt, he was hurt by those actions, Alexis had turned suit and injured him through good-intentions. No, she decided them, she would not hurt him, for she loved him too much.   
  
He said he forgave her, but he never truly had. How do you forgive someone that? She was rationalizing again, her hands slipping to the glass and leaving marks where they lay. Her palms were stretched outward toward the city, begging from it strength to break her own heart, in hopes of saving his again.  
  
A broken heart also teaches you the true meaning of love - sacrificing yourself for the sake of your beloved, your heart for theirs. Again, Alexis chuckled, knowing that, though Stefan taught her many things of bravery and freedom in her youth, he had never taught her true pain, true love, true bravery, and true sacrifice.   
  
She sighed then, "Prosvyet," a whisper, airy in wording, heavy in tone, "prosvyet."  
  
Her motive was to save him from a broken heart by breaking her own; to save herself the injury down the line, when more was invested; to regain the freedom she knew it was time he be given back, and that she take back.  
  
The strength she willed from the cold night sky was not enough to keep her there, not enough to hold her heart together for another day, another moment. And so, with another glance at the bedroom door, she walked to it, cracking it open for a quiet moment, just long enough to breathe in the scent that permeated the room -*Ned*- and her mind, and glance at his half unwrapped form.   
  
"I love you," she whispered into the room, the words lingering like the moonlight that streamed in over him as well. "Never forget," she continued, kissing her fingertips and thrusting her hand ungracefully towards his still figure. "Good-bye, Ned."  
  
She shut the bedroom door softly, tears she thought were long ago dry flowing again, leaning against it to lay a kiss on the surface of the wood, one she hoped he'd somehow feel, somehow find; and her heart shattered completely, as loud as the engine that powered the Cassadine yacht in the harbor below, and as quietly as the wind that moved outside her window.  
  
"Prosvyet," she whispered, and shut the hotel door behind her, bound for destinations not truly far, but with a new lesson learned via her broken heart.  
  
A broken heart teaches you things your brother can not, she had agreed, like how to say *farewell*.  
  
Inside the room, Ned leaned his head against the bedroom door, having heard her words and knowing that she was gone, not just down the street in her penthouse, but *gone* from his being. She tore herself away.  
  
He lay a soft kiss upon the door, knowing that somehow she'd know, and replayed the sound of the door clicking shut over and over in his mind. And his heart also, lay in pieces as legion as the mirror he threw her vase against a moment later. And the splintering of glass covered the sound of his cry, as he too melted into tears.  
  
And somewhere in Port Charles north of Luke's club, in a car bound for a destination seconds away, a woman dried her tears as a radio announcer whispered into the night, "Bittersweet are the good-byes we say but do not feel."  
  
---I'm reaching back, trying to touch the moment   
Each precious minute that you were mine   
How do you prepare, when you love someone this way,  
To let them go a little more each day?---  
  
And beautiful are the memories.  
  
---The innocence we've lost   
The hurting at the end   
I go there again,   
´cause it was beautiful...--- 


End file.
